Isotope were one of the major (and earliest) British jazz-rock bands of the 1970s, coming along chronologically only just behind Soft Machine and Nucleus, the two UK pioneer bands in the genre. Isotope was formed by guitarist Gary Boyle in 1972. After about a year, the band signed with a major U.K. management company who got the band signed to a independent label which was owned by a film company and things really took off. By the time of their second and best-known album, Illusion, the band consisted of Gary, ex-Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper keyboardist Laurence Scott and drummer Nigel Morris. This version of the band lasted nearly 2 years and played hundreds of shows.

Golden Section is over 65' of all unreleased material, taken from 3 different dates, all from the period when Hugh was a part of the band and lent his strongly distinctive style to the group; from the opening notes of the album, it's readily apparent that Hugh is in the house! More than half the CD is a program recorded by Radio Bremen in Germany for broadcast. During this time, the band included a fifth member, percussionist Aureo de Souza, who played with the group for several months during spring/summer 1975 and added a definite Weather Report-inspired flair, but whose tenure with the group has never before been documented on record or heard! In addition to the music, Golden Section includes a 12 page booklet with exclusive interviews with the musicians, conducted by Aymeric Leroy, that gives an overview of the entire history of the band and tells the full story of the period covered by these recordings. Also included are never-before seen photographs of the group.

"We played a lot of gigs with Isotope, touring all the time in the UK and Europe and once in the States. The band had good sponsorship and backing, and jazz-rock was almost desirable for a few months in 1974-75! We were playing at least four or five times a week, all the time. Isotope certainly was good for me from the point of view of doing a lot of music. Since we were gigging so much, I was probably playing with more technical facility than when I was in Soft Machine." – Hugh Hopper

"Cuneiform Records, always pulling out fascinating live documents from a wide array of British aggregates (including several Soft Machine discs), doubles the output of this short-lived Isotope lineup with Golden Section.... The sound of the album ranges from good to perfect and Hopper is in usual fine form. Isotope and colleague bands like Nucleus were still making compelling fusion documents by the time their American counterparts were already caricatures." – All About Jazz NY

"This CD of previously unreleased material centers on their most fruitful period of 1974 and 1975 near the end of the band's existence...This time capsule document of Isotope, while rare, long overdue,and quite worthwhile, pays tribute to a group whose potential was never fully realized." – All Music Guide

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